| By Andrew Morton. |
LOS ANGELES TIMES
For months, Angelina Jolie's face has been looking out from billboards alongside a single question: "Who is Salt?"
The tagline refers to the new thriller, "Salt," about a CIA agent suspected of being a Russian spy. But the genius in the marketing, of course, is that we're asking the same thing about the actress herself.
Enter "Angelina," the unauthorized biography by Andrew Morton, who has penned biographies of Tom Cruise, Monica Lewinsky and Princess Diana.
Morton's "Salt" is a 35-year-old, second-generation Hollywood actor who has spent her entire life in the public eye, careening through a crazy-quilt of rumor, truth and half-truth regarding a fascination with death, heroin use, bisexuality, the serial inking of skin, the bedding of other women's men, the winning of an Academy Award, a U.N. goodwill ambassadorship and the top spot of Forbes' 2009 "Celebrity 100" list ... not to mention having a family of six kids with Brad Pitt.
If there is a celebrity today who merits the spadework of an unauthorized Morton biography, it's Jolie, with a potential audience that includes just about anyone who has gone through a supermarket checkout line, caught a Jolie headline and wondered, "What was she thinking?"
Morton can't say for sure what makes her tick. None of the principal players in the tale -- which begins in 1950 with the birth of her mother, Marcia Lynne Bertrand, and ends earlier this year with her charity work in Haiti -- appear to have cooperated with him, but Morton manages to advance a plausible theory nonetheless.
Morton points out early on that Angelina Jolie Voight, born June 4, 1975, is a Gemini -- complete with all the light/dark, good/bad, impulsive/reflective duality that the astrological sign entails. But, since the world is home to plenty of Geminis who haven't inked Billy Bob Thornton's name below their bikini line on a whim, there's clearly more at work.
If there's anyone to blame here, according to this book, it's the parents, since the bitter relationship between actor Jon Voight and Marcia Lynne (later Marcheline) Bertrand runs as a subplot throughout.
The book also reports, in addition to two marriages -- first to actor Jonny Lee Miller and later to Thornton -- pursuit by a besotted Timothy Hutton, a near-romantic encounter with Gary Sinise and a relationship with model Jenny Shimizu. And then there's the fireball of fame that is Brangelina.
It's at this point that the book seems to move into hyperdrive, with endless rounds of globe-trotting, location shooting, child-acquiring and philanthropic efforts. But the faster it seems to move, the harder it is to put down. Maybe that's because, like salt, we have a craving for explanation, for back story, and Morton's book offers a satisfying dose of both. Source: www.freep.com
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| Lindsay [Lohan] is very upset that the judge ordered her to go straight to rehab," a source says |
The actress, 24, was released from a Lynwood, California, jail early Monday morning after serving 13 full days of a90-day sentence for violating probation in a DUI case. She was directly sent to rehab at UCLA Medical Center, where she is required to complete a three-month inpatient stint, according to Judge Marsha Revel's sentencing order.
Though her mom Dina and younger sister Ali met up with Lohan at UCLA on Monday, "[Lindsay] feels that she deserved to spend a day with her family after she behaved well in jail," says the source.
Video: Lohan leaves jail, heads to rehab
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* Lindsay Lohan
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Lohan, the source adds, is feeling "depressed." "[She] is having a difficult time accepting that she will be inrehab for the next three months," the source says. "She still doesn't think that she needs any help."
See full article at PEOPLE.com
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Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb in the Warner Bros. Melissa Moseley / Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. |
The dream goes on. Inception won the weekend at North American theaters, according to early studio estimates. Christopher Nolan's labyrinthine thriller, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the leader of a team that invades a man's sleep patterns, earned $27.5 million in its third weekend. The film thus joins Avatar, Alice in Wonderland and Shrek Forever After — all movies whose protagonists fall or leap into alternative-reality dream worlds — in 2010's three-time-winners' club. Inception should cross the $200 domestic mark by Tuesday, and has already taken in $170 million abroad.
The second place finisher, Dinner for Schmucks, had been the top-grossing movie Friday night, before tepid word-of-Tweet (and a so-so B rating from CinemaScore's exiting moviegoers) alerted frequent filmgoers that the Steve Carell-Paul Rudd comedy was not an essential see. Schmucks should finish the weekend with $23.3 million, or almost as much as the combined take of the other two entries in wide release. The sequel Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore pulled in a kitten- or puppy-sized $12.5 million, landing in fifth place. Maybe the hit cartoon Despicable Me, which earned $15.5 million in its fourth weekend, sucked too much helium out of the kids'-party balloon. Or maybe the fanciers of CGI-aided talking-canine comedies are saving their money for Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2, due out later this year.
Charlie St. Cloud, the teen weepie starring High School Musical's Zac Efron, is expected to have tallied a dry-eyed $12.1 million in its first three days. It should replicate the modest earnings of this March's Remember Me, another love story with a certified dreamboat headliner (Twilight's Robert Pattinson), a dead brother and a four-hankie rating. Viewers showed less interest in getting moist-eyed with Zac than in revisiting burlier movies with older stars: the Angelina Jolie spy-caper Salt, which finished third this weekend, and Adam Sandler's Grown Ups, which in its sixth week has passed $150 million and is Sandler's solidest since his remake of The Longest Yard in 2005.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2008019,00.html#ixzz0vOVvhQyp
King of Pop reportedly left hard drives filled with unheard music
by DANIEL KREPS
Rolling Stone
An all-new Michael Jackson collection featuring 10 unreleased songs will be released this November, a rep for the Jackson estate exclusively tells Rolling Stone.
At the time of his death Jackson reportedly left hard drives filled with unheard music, much of it recorded during the King of Pop's '80s peak. Jackson's manager Frank DiLeo told RS that he estimates that Jackson's vaults contain more than 100 completed and unreleased songs, including collaborations with Akon, Will.i.am and Ne-Yo.
"There are a couple of songs we recorded for the Bad album that we had to cut that are just sensational," DiLeo said.Track Michael Jackson's legacy in the year after his death
"Every time that [Jackson] recorded, he over-recorded. He would record anywhere from 20 to 30 songs for each album," former Sony Music CEO Tommy Mottola told RS last year. Any of them could have been as big a hit as the ones that came out." One of the most noteworthy tracks was a "Thriller" outtake titled "Don't Be Messin' Around." Other candidates include any of the reported five songs that Jackson recorded with Will.i.am.
Last year, a pair of unreleased Jackson tracks, "Another Day" and "A Place With No Name," leaked, and recently Rodney Jerkins, who co-produced Jackson's 2001 album "Invincible," revealed to VladTV that he's currently working on the collection. Read more : http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/38488292/ns/today-entertainment/
